A 2nd Bush term will cripple the future of the Republican Party

If Bush were re-elected, I seriously think it will jeopardize the Republican party for the next 16-20 years.  The backlash of a second Bush term has been talked about in Conservative publications ("The American Conservative" among them) and I think it's legit.  

If Bush is elected as president for a second term, the Republican party will face serious problems in 08, and beyond with younger voters and diminished support for more socially liberal Repub. candidates.  If Bush wins, it will NOT be because of Iraq, or Terrorism, or fiscal policy.  If Bush wins it will be because of one thing:  the socially conservative, religious right turnout swung the election in his direction.  

Conservative Christians will have decided this election if Bush wins and the backlash will be felt for decades.  

Let's now fastforward four years.  The likely Repub candidates: McCain, Guliani, andother, more socially moderate/liberal Repubs.  

Does ANYone think that the conservative, religious base who got Bush elected will vote support a Republican candidate who supports Gay Marriage, Reproductive Rights?   Hell no they won't.

Then you'll have the moderate Republicans who in 08 will be SO pissed about the way Bush has run the country into the ground, divided the nation, run up an even bigger deficit, gotten even MORE soldiers killed in Iraq, etc.  And these moderates will remember WHO got Bush re-elected; the religious right.  Thus will begin the backlash.

The right-wing, religious will look at McCain or Guliani and see a religious pariah.  The moderates will see someone who supported the horrible Bush and (in Guliani) criticised the troops (for the missing explosives).  NEITHER group will support the new candidate with any real zeal.

AND, in 08 there will be this entirely new crop of voters.  Voters who were too young to vote in 04.  Voters who have since seen their friends killed in Iraq - just because they wanted to save for college tuition.  Voters who can't FATHOM why we wouldn't let their gay friends get married.  Voters who have been raised by the internet, have become MORE informed than any generation before them, and who are more loyal to family and friends than to party.

Those voters come in, as their baby-boomer, still-pissed-about-the-60s elders die off.

I work with these younger voters every day.  They do NOT understand these predilicitons towards hate because of Vietnam.  The word "liberal" is no more dirty to them than is "gay."

The sour taste of 8 years of bush left in the mouths of these kids won't wash out easily.  

In short, a Bush win in 04 should scare the SHIT out of Republican. I'm a strong Democrat, but I don't know that I can stomach another four years of Bush ruining my country and the Republican Party.